Posies on the Print Table

It seems that the darker the days are, the more I find myself working with bright colours!

Today it's flower posies.  Posies on everything - posies on tea towels, posies on aprons, posies on lengths of cloth.

3 Colours

And 4 colours, printed on a pale blue length of cloth that I must have dyed 20 years ago - reinforcing my belief that one should never throw anything out!

Another 2 colours to go......let's hope I don't spoil it!

 

Sewing with adults with learning disabilities/ difficulties  (ALD).

I've been going through my photos of various community projects over the years and I came across these fabulous stitched cakes made by a group of adults with learning disabilities that I taught for a while.  

  

I would have loved to have sewn these all together to make a  wall hanging, but the students were understandably eager to take their own work home.

 

           

 

When I do sewing with ALD learners, I usually help them to cut out their shapes from felt, thread needles and tie knots.  After that, I encourage them to stitch on their own as much as possible.  I really love their quirky stitches and great colour choices.

 

Top a cake

 

 The main learning for them is to remember to put the needle in from underneath.   I sometimes draw the shape on the back of the felt so that they can see where to sew.

                       

Suffolk puffs really look just like piped icing

Pinwheel bicuits, just like my grandmother used to make!

Yummy looking chocolate cake - with a bit of fruit on the side for healthy eating!

 

The class worked on these for a few weeks (1 morning a week) and there was lots of hilarious conversations about cakes, as well as sensory fun with choosing the colours and decorations - try running your hand through a box of buttons! They loved personalising the decorations on the cakes and borders of the pictures. 

Amazing how much happiness can come from a bit of felt and a jar of ribbon scraps!

On the Print Table Lots of Spots

When I moved into my home, I sewed up some white lining fabric for our bedroom curtains.  I thought that once we had some more money, I would get some curtain fabric and add to these.  

 

30 years later .....and it still hadn't happened. For all those years, I've been waking up to a boring set of white curtains.

This year when I took them down to wash, I was determined to print something on them before they went up again. Actually, I was tempted to procrastinate for another 30 years, trying to achieve the perfect design.  But in a fit of uncharactaristic decisiveness, I just printed  up a design that I happened to be playing with at the moment.   

 

 

So there it is, lots of spots.   We hung them up yesterday, and when I woke up this morning, seeing them made me feel happy!

 

 

 

Celebrating Repairs

Inspired by the book  Mending Matters by Katrina Rodabaugh.  Not very neat, but my first attempt. Now all I have to do is lose my lock down weight so I can actually fit into them again!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Natural Dye Samples

I really love old textile sample books.  

There is a book I've seen somewhere which came from a Victorian textile factory, swatching dye colours with formulae handwritten alongside each sample.  There are lots of these on Pinterest though I can't find the exact one that I have in mind.  

It's kind of like this one  New York Swatch  but a bit more technical.

Anyway,  here's some of my little natural dye swatch book that I've been adding to over the summer.

 

It's been like an alchemnist's laboratory in my studio, all steam and bits of bark! 

These are all variations in colour using logwood dye with various mordants and modifiers.
 

The same on silk - Some knockout colours                                                                                                    
                                          

More dusky colours with Copper.
                          

                                                                        And so many dyestuffs still to be tested!

 

I used Jenny Dean's recipe in her book -  Wild Colour, which I can't reccommend highly enough.

Indigo Summer

Several times over the years, I've dipped into Indigo vats made by friends and tutors and one summer I even made a vat in the garden.  I've been promising myself I'd do that again and each summer since then seems to slip by without the lovely blues that are indigo. (that is indigo??)

 

Well, this has been the year of no excuses!  No holiday club bookings, in fact, no holiday.

So I finally did my vat.  In fact I did several.   I tried the 123 fermentation method,  I tried the ferrous ferment and I tried the quick and easy prereduced indigo and spectralite.  I loved them all! 

 

 

 

 Now, I have  great stock of blues to see me through a winter of stitching!

 

Stapleford School Banners

In our 'new normal' it's difficult to remember that not so long ago we were able to do projects like this. Nowadays I get antsy if I see people standing too close in a movie, let alone across a table, screen printing!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 In the spring term, I worked one to one with every child at Stapleford Community Primary School to print these banners for the school hall. The final project went up just a few days before we went into lockdown.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was another brilliant project organised by Leslie Morgan, Arts Development Officer for Sawston and Bottisham Schools area and generously funded by Arts Society South Cambs. Polly Bodmer who is the Young Arts representative of the society was a very hard working volunteer, right hand woman and general creative consultant. 

 

Thank you, fabulous Polly!!!

 

 

 

Hand Printed Tea Towels - ALDD

As many of you know, I teach classes for Adults with Learning Difficulties.

One of these is an enterprise class which I teach through Cambridgeshire Skills.  Last year the class designed and screen printed tea towels to sell at the Mill Road Winter Fair. 

It's such a  valuable experience for the learners.  They were involved in booking their stall, costing out the project, designing, screen printing the tea towels, making labels, setting up the display, talking to customers, taking payments and calculating change as well as keeping records and accounts.

I'm sure, you won't be surprised to hear that they sold out completely by 3.00 o' clock!

Dyeing with Brazilwood

And so my explorations in dying with plant dyes continues- beautiful colours, all from Brazilwood with different mordants and modifiers on cotton and the more vibrant colours on silks.

I used the method described by Jenny Dean in her excellent book Wild Colours which I seem to have accidently bought twice!!

Creative Isolation 2

Nothing is ever a failure in textile art.  Sometimes it's good to have things that don't quite work out as you'd hoped.  

Firstly, of course, it teaches me what not to do. 

Secondly it drives me to do more research and I love an excuse to buy a book.  

Thirdly it frees me up to rip, print and sew all over them. To think what if........

In that spirit, I've been using some last week's horrible fabrics and papers to do some stitching.  Also a bit of bark from the poor dyeing birch tree we had to take down in the garden. The flowers and cups are from drawings I made of my grandmother's tea set and screen printed onto scraps of fabric.

I have to give credit to Cas Holmes for inspiring these little patches.
TextilesArtist.org has been running some fab free workshops on their facebook page with wonderful stitch artists. I completely fell in love with Cas Holmes's approach - If you get a chance, have a look at her wonderful workshop.

Creative Isolation

Isolation-  and how to make the most of it? 

I know there are people who are bored at home, but not me.  Oh no, I have a lifetime of stuff I've been saving for just this moment.  I finally have revenge on the minimalists of this world.  I have clutter and I am glad of it!  

One of my students once said that she was sure I had a house full of beautiful things I had made. I had to set her right- I have a beautiful house full of beautiful materials for beautiful things things that I'm going to make...one day.  Indeed, my proverbial 'rainy day' has come!

The first week, I got out my mordants and cottons and set myself up to do some natural dyeing and printing.  I produced a lot of fabrics and I have to say, the results were generally quite underwhelming.  

 I mean the bundles looked great as they came out from steaming,

 and one fabric looked rather lovely.

but generally I got a lot of these:

 Actually I lie - this was the best of the rest.  I got an awful lot of beige.

But I did get some great photos from the process, like this one of the steamed foliage.

It's like something out of the swamp - which is what the fens once were. 

So all is cyclical.

 

Scrubs Bags

Okay, I feel guilty......I really love being in isolation. I am so grateful to live in house with plenty of room for making stuff; to have a job that I love and can do from home; a beautiful garden and to have a really loving and patient partner.


I've been sewing a few scrubs laundrey bags to send out to care homes. I started off making bags from pillow slips. Then I did a couple of very simple bags.

I realised that I needed to to make it a bit more interesting for myself so I did a bit of simple printing on the fabric before I sewed them up.

Here is a very simple way to make the very easiest scrubs bags.  The drawstring fold is on the inside but that doesn't matter, it flips out once you use it.

Thanks to Cary for interpreting my very muddled instructions into these drawings.

Lazy Daisies Screen Print

Well, at my final class before lock down a couple of weeks ago, only 1 student arrived (thanks for bravely venturing forth, Jane!). 

I suggested we carry on as normal, with a bit of distance between us,  and do some screen printing.  

For once, instead of working my way around the students, generally getting on their nerves, I had a chance to join her in doing a bit of printing myself.  It's lovely having a great big classroom with only 2 people at work.

I made a really quick stencil and printed a couple of rows of black backgrounds with the daisies coming through as white. Yesterday, I dropped in the yellow centres and that made me happy. Just something simple and happy.

All this awful corona pandemic is definitely making me appreciate small pockets of joy.

Perhaps if isolation continues I might actually sew it up as a panel on a happy dress.

Keep safe, be well and especially to all who are at risk.